The tower/keep/castle foundation LOS bug (to be precise) was a bugged patch to begin with as it had a side effect on the foundation of houses.

So not only is this a poor "feature" to have introduced, it actually broke house foundations and left them highly bugged when it comes to item placement. We have had wonky foundations on these particular structures for around four years now.

I have suggested this before, ill do it again: Revert this patch until a proper one can be put into place. I wont go against the era accuracy portion of this, only the broken implementation of it in the first place.

So there's been a lot said in this thread and I won't bother quoting most of it, but I will go over what we do know.

First, this LoS "exploit" as it were, has two separate variants, one due to uneven land, and one due to foundation types. Both have a lot of evidence suggesting that it was possible to do during pre-T2A up to present day (as of a few months ago at least).

The first type, which is commonly known here as the "tower bug" allows players to target any LoS spell under a tower foundation, hitting any player within the house at virtually any location by simply targeting the desired location, standing a few tiles back, and using either the Razor or in-game last target function (in-game LastTarget function was introduced with the second T2A client in August 1999). This particular behavior is a manifestation of the same type of bug outlined in a January 1998 newsgroup post about an old castle break in exploit involving teleporting into the courtyard by standing back a few tiles, and targeting one of the visible tiles in the courtyard, which was fixed by a November 1997 patch preventing players from teleporting within 3 tiles of any multiobject (this code is still in place on OSI servers as of a few months ago). This behavior can also be replicated in the demo, and can also be done on live servers today, which shows a consistency of mechanical behavior stretching back to, at minimum, 2 months after the game came out.

While we know exactly how this particular "exploit" works, the issue with attempting to fix this behavior is that we don't know what kind of unintended consequences that this behavior will have on other normal functions in game. There's also the very relevant fact that this particular behavior is still possible now, and so far as we know, has been possible since the beginning of the game. Granted, the use of this behavior to kill players standing inside houses was rendered irrelevant in 2006 with a patch that prevented players from damaging anything with LoS spells that they couldn't see, so it may not have been relevant for them to attempt to fix it. However, the fact that this particular use of this behavior was possible for over 7 years when I figured out what caused it in less than a week is telling.

The second type, which is known for its use on houses near uneven landscape, is a manifestation of the exact same code that allows players to teleport onto the roof of places like the Britain bank, or onto the roof of any flat structure. This behavior, which was implemented by Derrick from code decompiled from the demo core by Batlin, was only possible once that code was implemented here. Tests via the UO:98 project (the demo client does not contain the necessary functions to produce the desired results, but late T2A clients could do it just fine) and on live OSI servers show that identical behavior can be achieved in both environments to those currently found on UOSA.

This is an even more significant issue than the last one, as this deals with the core LoS function. While we could certainly choose another LoS function, we would be messing with the very core of how countless functions in the game determine the behavior of various functions from whether someone can shoot an arrow at a given angle, to whether a player can cast a spell on someone on severely uneven ground. It is also virtually impossible for us to come up with an equation for LoS that will have the same behavior in all other circumstances while preventing players from utilizing the same technique for teleporting onto the roof of a flat building, but only in instances when attempting to target a house from an uneven location. There is a virtual guarantee that any LoS code we would implement would break other things in favor of fixing this, which wouldn't serve to fix anything but simply shift the problem elsewhere.

There's more that can be said regarding whether this is or isn't an exploit (see: teleporting on roof vs throwing potions. Which is an exploit, and how can you differentiate them if one is and the other isn't?), or whether we have any evidence that OSI actually banned anyone for doing this, but I've stated my position on this elsewhere, and searching the forums for my posts on this behavior will doubtless bring you to them.

As a final note on this subject, this behavior isn't going to be changed, unless you can convince Derrick to have a change of heart on the subject, and then get him to actually implement something else.

Now for the part that I will quote:

Mens Rea wrote:

With respect, Kaivan didn't play T2A UO, how would he know what it was all about anyway.

I actually did play during T2A. I started in September 1999, and played through until AoS was introduced.

_________________

UOSA Historian and former staff member: August 11, 2008 - June 19, 2016

Sept 1999 is not early enough to absorb the spirit of the T2A, pre-trammel era.

LOS exploiting to allow killing inside stone buildings is game breaking. Game breaking bugs and exploits are not part of UOSA policy. Remove this game breaking exploit. The shard will be better for it. Refer to my table above.

Kaivan, Thanks for weighing in on this thread. The reasons you provided for not changing mechanics for targeting using uneven ground seems legit. I would still ask that we fix foundations of fortress type housing.

Although it may have been possible in era, this just wasn't something that people did. And given it's only use as I can see is to grief, it really should be removed. Thanks.

Sept 1999 is not early enough to absorb the spirit of the T2A, pre-trammel era.

I know I left my kilt somewhere...

Mens Rea wrote:

LOS exploiting to allow killing inside stone buildings is game breaking. Game breaking bugs and exploits are not part of UOSA policy. Remove this game breaking exploit. The shard will be better for it. Refer to my table above.

I've already given an answer on this subject earlier in this thread. The behavior will not be changed unless you can convince Derrick that something else is more desirable.

Edit: I won't be responding to this thread anymore tonight (and probably not on following days either).

_________________

UOSA Historian and former staff member: August 11, 2008 - June 19, 2016

Kaivan, Thanks for weighing in on this thread. The reasons you provided for not changing mechanics for targeting using uneven ground seems legit. I would still ask that we fix foundations of fortress type housing.

Although it may have been possible in era, this just wasn't something that people did. And given it's only use as I can see is to grief, it really should be removed. Thanks.

+1 DND.

Kaivan, would you help me persuade Derrick to fix fortress style foundations? Seeing as you are taking an objective approach to the situation, I'm sure if you put your weight behind a 'game breaking fix' avenue then things could happen. Vote Kaivan 2015.

While we know exactly how this particular "exploit" works, the issue with attempting to fix this behavior is that we don't know what kind of unintended consequences that this behavior will have on other normal functions in game.

This is not a viable reason to do nothing about it. We don't know how anything will impact anything else without proper testing. Doing nothing is not the first step to solving any issue. Is it an issue? It most certainly is. Would you get banned for it on OSI? It's hard to say, but based on how they handled many era bugs (especially ones that they didn't fix), you would certainly land in jail, which is the first step to getting banned (24, 48, 72, or perma).

Is there a way to tell if there is a house foundation in the Z axis of the target location and preventing it from being cast? Specifically with the spells that are causing the issues. It wouldn't interfere with the teleport spell and should still allow MS/EQ next to the house causing damage to those within 2 tiles just like old UO.

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